As a former New Jersey state trooper, Bob Delaney was assigned to go undercover as part of a multi-agency task force investigating the activities of the Mob along the waterfront. For nearly three years in the late-1970s, Delaney posed as a Mob-connected contractor and owner of Alamo Trucking, based in Jersey City. He gathered incriminating information on many Mafiosi who knew him only by his undercover name Bobby Covert.

Delaney’s mission to circulate undetected in the criminal underworld led him to adapt many of the personality traits of the mobsters he hoped to put away. After the undercover operation known as Project Alpha ended in 1979, the young agent struggled with the difficulties of re-adapting to civilian life. He became paranoid and belligerent, exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. With the help of his family – and almost no official assistance from the government agencies who compelled him to go undercover in the first place – Delaney eventually got his life back on track, fulfilling a life-long dream of becoming an NBA referee.

All of this would seem to be the stuff of a terrific memoir, but Delaney’s account of his undercover years only partially delivers the goods. “Covert” feels more like an extended resume instead of what could have been a fascinating examination of the risks and perils of undercover work.

As an Irish American kid growing up in Patterson, New Jersey, Delaney loved basketball. But he was also drawn to his father’s world; his dad was a sergeant with the state police. At 21, Delaney followed in his father’s footsteps and a year and half later, while still a relatively green state trooper, he was enlisted into Project Alpha. “I was thrilled to have the chance at a special assignment so early in my State Police career . . . My thoughts raced with images of the mobsters I would be seeking out and befriending and all the precarious situations that awaited me,” writes Delaney.

The young lawman was considered a “prize catch” by the state police and FBI supervisors because Delaney was a bachelor, with few community attachments outside of his family. He hadn’t been a cop long enough to be a familiar face in the New Jersey or New York criminal underworlds. He was physically imposing, street smart and most of all, he was dedicated and loyal. His bosses believed he would hold up well under the untested pressures of being “dropped behind enemy lines.”

Although Delaney the author is too loyal to come right out and say it, Project Alpha suffered from a lack of focus. It was as much an intelligence gathering operation as anything else, with no single person or even crime organization a target. Delaney does reveal his true feelings when he writes, “I felt agitated, trapped in a role that was planned to last six months but at this point had stretched well past two years with no end in sight” – but he blows past this observation and others that might raise doubts about how the investigation was conceived or supervised.

In the end, Bobby Covert resurfaced as state trooper Bob Delaney, resulting in numerous arrests and indictments. In 1981, Delaney testified at U.S. Senate hearings on organized crime. “Covert” encapsulates these events in abbreviated form then moves on quickly to Delaney’s transition to NBA referee, a job he still holds – a narrative turn that feels as if it belongs in an entirely different book.

The author admits that the results of his double life were psychologically perilous, but he declines to acknowledge the deeper implications of bureaucratic responsibility. In the end Delaney remains, as always, a good soldier.